Another test build. All latest cvs commits are available in this one. Many bug fixes.
I still don't have an explanation for the crashes people experience. My only guess would be an incompatible Python version (prior to version 2.3).

well, I am running older python version... I haven't upgraded it because I am not sure what would happen... lot of tools in Fedora rely on python,.. and I am a bit afraid what would happen if I just go and download new python.

is 2.3 backwards compatible to 2.2 ?
if not, will 2.3 overwrite 2.2 upon istallation?
if I install python 2.3, can I still run old blender versions too?

these are the things I worry.. I need to work with my machine, it's not just testing ground, so I need to be careful

thank you all for all the response on the segfaults. Unfortunately with no additional information, I can't fix any problem.
I have to make the following assumptions:
- The segfault occurs when starting blender.
- You have Python 2.3 installed

Please, provide a little more information.

By the way: Python 2.3 is not binary compatible with Python 2.2. Blender links in Python 2.3 support. This means modules compiled for Python 2.2 will not work. Scripts are supposed to be compatible within versions.
We were expecting the Python version problems. In the past there was a group who had trouble starting blender because they had Python 2.3 installed, now there will be a group who will have trouble starting blender because they have Python 2.2 installed. This is a problem that is worked on. The goal is to have this fixed before the Blender 2.33 release, but it all depends on the amount of time we have available.

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
[Switching to Thread 16384 (LWP 5901)]
0x0851f28d in PyObject_GC_Del ()
(xxgdb) next
Single stepping until exit from function PyObject_GC_Del,
which has no line number information.
Cannot find user-level thread for LWP 5901: generic error
(xxgdb) next